May 9th event on commemorating the European charter of Fundamental Rights-A summary by DRPDNM10/21/2021 "We came to a conclusion that the best way to fight would be to inform citizens..." On May 9h - Europe day, the partners of the project TELL prepared an online event on the topic of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. All partners were invited to contribute and prepare a topic that was to be discussed on the round table during the event, as well as a case study - an example related to the topic, that is specific to the country we’re from. My name is Franja and I am a coordinator for this project for the Slovenian partner DRPDNM. Now, I try to follow the news and current (political) events as much and I can, especially when it comes to topics that I’m interested in. And human rights and fundamental freedoms fall under those topics. So when our Romanian partners, who were the hosts of the event on the 9th of May, asked us to prepare a round table contribution, the first thing that came into my mind was media freedom. In the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 11 defines the freedom of expression and information as a fundamental freedom. Here is what it says: Article 11
Freedom of expression and information 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. 2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected. However, in the past year, media freedom in Slovenia has been under attack. Since the right-wing government has come into power at the beginning of the pandemic, there has been an increase in pressure on our media, including verbal assaults on social media and smear campaigns, the purpose of which is to discredit critical journalists and media outlets. Calling female journalists “prostitutes” and proclaiming that the news outlets that disagree with the government or criticise it are “fake news”, “communist supporters”, or “deep state” are just some of the examples of Slovenian government’s attacks on journalists. The last strike came when the government cut funding for the state-owned news agency STA some months ago, which resulted in a successful wide national and international campaign for crowd founding for the news agency. Since then, there have been even more attacks on media freedom in our country, while the current Slovenian government is also limiting its citizens’ fundamental freedoms on a regular basis. The situation is even more alarming since Slovenia has taken over the EU presidency, which means these attacks now have an even wider reach and consequences. On the round table discussion participants from other partner countries agreed that the situation is critical, but there is only so much we can do. We came to a conclusion that the best way to fight would be to inform citizens, especially youngsters on critical thinking and educate them on filtering through fake news and hate speech.
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